“Okay.” He swallows. “Then let me keep it that way.”
“Why did you come back?” I whisper. “What did you do in New York, Christian?”
“Lana…”
“What did you dotoyourselfin New York?”
He shakes his head, grimacing. “I don’t… Lana?—”
“I need that,” I say. “What happened to your mother? Why did you have to take over? Why did you leave with her?”
“She’s still in New York. She wasn’t happy when I left but I told her to deal with it. After my dad died… I think my mother doesn’t know how to be alone without a man telling her what to do. She was so used to her conditions, she forgot herself,” he says. “So when my dad died, I guess she just couldn’t do it. My dad was trying to groom me for this even when I wasn’t interested.”
“Was it hard? Becoming CEO?”
“Very,” he breathes. “That is when things got…worse. Worse than the way I left.”
My heart breaks for him, the way it always did when he came home broken and bruised. When I saw him blacked out drunk on our kitchen floor or on our couch. I can’t imagine Christian in a worse state than the way he left. Alcohol consumed him, in New York it was poisoning him— killing him. It took him further and further away from me.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispers. “Don’t cry for me.”
I feel the wet drop on my cheek just before he wipes it away. I was always the emotional one, crying for Christian andhis pain as though it were my own. It’s hard not to when you love someone like this. You want to heal them, put up shields around them and defend the lines. You want to put your hand in their chest, hold their heart in your hands and show it affection until the wounds close. You want to take their pain in any way you can because you’d rather suffer than watch them suffer.
I love Christian too much to watch him suffer.
“I can’t help it,” I croak.
“I’m okay.”
“Are you?”
“I am, baby, I promise,” he says. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
I nod. “What happened last night… it can’t happen again.”
“Okay.”
“Not until?—”
“I know,” Christian says. “I agree.”
“You do?”
“Despite what you might think,” he says, “I can control myself around you.”
I scoff. “Okay.”
Then he pulls back to spin me into his chest and dips me, a new dance move. His face hovers over mine and with the sunlight, I have the perfect look of his eyes. Coffee brown with flecks of honey around his irises that you’ll only see if you’re paying close enough attention.
His eyes drop to my lips and the tip of his tongue darts out, pressing against his bottom lip before he looks back into my eyes. His face comes in closer and closer until I feel his breath, and he whispers, “I think maybe it’s you that can’t control yourself around me.”
Probably.
“I don’t think so,” I breathe, my eyes dropping to his full lips that part. “Stop that.”
“What am I doing?”
“You know what you’re doing, Christian Calloway,” I sigh, taking a step back and out of the bubble.
